


An antiquated Grace

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Closets, F/M, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Marquis de Lafayette - Freeform, Romance, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7778017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary and Emma open a locked door and discover what is within, consider what they may do with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An antiquated Grace

“Matron let me have the key, should you like to come with me and see what we may unearth?” Mary asked. 

Emma had looked a little disconsolate all day but with no particular reason Mary could divine. She managed to perch gracefully on a hand-backed chair, taking dictation from a boy from Raleigh, while seeming as if all she wanted to do was sigh. She was on the verge of pouting, which suited her striped and flounced dress and bluebell eyes but not Mansion House or its inhabitants and not certainly not Miss Nightingale or Miss Dix’s ideal. Mary had seen Henry warily circling, making tentative attempts to engage her, but she had either been politely dismissive or frankly rebuffed him. Mary suspected the first as he had not seemed as gloomy as the second response would have likely made him. Jed had pointed it out to her, remarking “Quite the minuet, don’t you think? But perhaps you can find something to put them both out of their misery, you’re quite a dab hand at that.” He’d given her such a cheeky smile that she’d agreed reorganizing the smaller kitchen could wait as could the daily letter Private Turner wanted penned to his mother, her own overdue letter to her sister and a brief response to Mr. Squivers, who’d lately written to let her know of his safe arrival in Worcester and that city’s gracious welcome. 

It had been a strange relief to have such a different problem to solve. Three men, boys really, had died of pneumonia in the past week and Anne Hastings had been either intoxicated or grim-faced with the lack of spirits and in both cases, dramatically more malicious. It seemed unfair that neither state rendered her milder or less trenchant. Mary had accepted that part of her role as Head Nurse was to absorb Anne’s unremitting hostility but she did find it wore on her. She fancied she had gotten better at concealing the toll it took though there were days when Samuel always seemed to be about or Jed was unexpectedly thoughtful, when she felt his dark eyes following her without any demand or desire, only a gentle encouragement she could never had imagined from him her first week at Mansion House. 

There was much she could not have imagined the first few days after her arrival, not least of which was the fondness she’d developed for Emma Green, who had initially seemed to be determined to be the archetypal Dixie thorn in Mary’s Yankee side. They’d surprised each other repeatedly until Mary had accepted that Emma was more than a preening Southern belle play-acting at nursing and Emma had decided that an abolitionist Yankee widow could show her a path to womanhood her own mother did not advocate but which might suit Emma better than what had been outlined for her. They weren’t fast friends, but they were more than allies, recognized their kindred spirits even as they struggled with their differences. Mary thought it would be little enough to make an effort to jolly Emma from her current dismay and she had been wondering about the contents, if there were any, of the little closet she’d found in the east wing of Mansion House. Emma might know the answer and if she did not, she was likely to be at least somewhat intrigued by the question. 

Matron had peered a bit at Mary, narrowed her dark eyes and just stared until Mary noticed how long the older woman’s eyelashes were and wondered a little how many heads Matron had turned in her youth. She knew to be patient and was rewarded with a slightly rusty key Matron detached from the clanking cluster at her belt, then handed over to Mary with the firm instruction to return it “without any dawdling, me fine Head Nurse, for I’m the mistress of it and this place in a way you’ll never be, more’s the pity.” Mary of the blue travelling coat and bonnet would have ducked her head and quickly thanked Matron but she knew better now, gave the older woman an appraising, approving glance of her own and replied, “The pity would be for Mansion House, Matron, were you not the one responsible, and well I know it.” That earned her a nod, a twinkle and an “Off with ye now, but mind ye show me anything of note that ye find, young Molly.” Mary took the key then, stowed it in her pinafore pocket, and thought how dissimilar the same name might sound in two such different voices and different tones. She had not thought “Molly” could be crisp and directive and maternal, when she’d only known it affectionate, tender, yearning, a name made of dreamy shadows and a low, Chesapeake drawl that was drawn from the blue twilight, the wafting fragrance of mimosa.

Fortunately or not, her musings, which had begun to drift ever closer to Jedediah’s brown eyes, the solid breadth of him leaning against a doorway, were arrested by the mighty, screeching racket Anne made passing through the hallway, Samuel trailing behind her. He had given her such a quick glance but she read his bemusement and friendly commiseration; she thought to give one similar to Emma and see the result. She’d been pleased when all she’d had to do was simply ask Emma to join her in her explorations of the closet she’d discovered tucked under an eave and she had felt Henry’s approving gaze on them as they walked from the Confederate ward to the fourth floor, up and up the stairs, away and away from the men, the world below.

“Should you like to do the honors?” Mary offered but Emma demurred. The door was smaller than average, one corner cut sharply to fit the eave and it had an unusual doorknob, the brass chased with rosemary, even more intriguing than she had recalled.

“No, go ahead. I hope we are not disappointed and discover only a collection of brooms and dustpans. I’ve always imagined this as a sort of Aladdin’s cave, ever since I was a little girl. But Mamma would never let me even peek inside,” Emma said. Mary saw a much younger Emma, hair in careful beribboned ringlets and a long sash trailing behind her, peeping at the door, trying the handle, before being sent away by a busy housemaid or chastened by her mother.

“It’s a little stuck, just, ah! There we are!” Mary said, wrestling a bit with the key and lock, a reluctant pairing. The light from the hallway was bright enough she did not regret forgoing a lamp. She and Emma stepped in.

“Oh, Mary! Look!” Emma exclaimed. 

The closet was not quite Aladdin’s cave but it was full of items that years of hotel guests had left behind, travelling cloaks and carpet-bags, an array of bonnets with drooping feathers or limp silk flowers tucked under brims and along crowns. There was a very old-fashioned dressing sacque in ivory silk that had yellowed and a pair of men’s breeches trimmed with lace. Tall boots in desperate need of polishing stood in a corner and Mary wondered what their owner had thought, what circumstances could have occurred to lead to the abandonment of such an expensive and necessary item. There were green satin ladies shoes with a dainty heel and little shell buttons securing the scalloped edge and a basket full of laundered handkerchiefs. There were parasols and a walking stick with the carved head of a lion in ivory, the eyes a pair of emeralds, and a dozen pair of ladies’ gloves. There were also, to Mary’s great surprise, three wigs in a state of moderate disrepair, seemingly in need of powdering and general upkeep, but entirely recognizable as icons of another era.

“Whoever would have guessed?” Mary said, running a careful finger along the seam of a rosy satin slipper. 

“I don’t know why Mamma never let Alice and me come inside—what games we would have played, what utter delight!” Emma exclaimed.

“Perhaps that was why, perhaps they kept these things locked away in case their rightful owners should seek their return,” Mary suggested. She understood the wish in Emma’s voice though, knew how she and her sister, their cousins Ruth and Abigail, would have spent hours dressing themselves in these left-behind cast-offs, what stories they would have concocted, what adventures the hallway would have seen. She was a little dazed with the imagined memory when Emma’s voice interrupted her.

“Shall I be the Marquis de Lafayette or General Burgoyne, Nurse Mary?” 

Emma had set one of the wigs atop her shining dark hair; the contrast should have looked foolish or possibly even grotesque, the dull grey of the wig’s horsehair curls set against Emma’s fresh face, her pink cheeks and bright eyes, but it was entirely the opposite, charming and whimsical and engaging, even as the wig slipped and fell askew against Emma’s forehead.

“I couldn’t say, other than to be sure you would inspire your troops—though, to what end? However… You have given me an idea, Emma, quite a good one, I think.”

“Pray tell, dear lady or should I say, mon cher Coeur, if I am to be the Marquis and you my lady-fair,” Emma said. Mary smiled at the younger woman’s liveliness and animation; she had not seen this before and gathered what a general favorite it must make her. And what a particular favorite if could make her…

“I think time is long past when the original owners of these things will come for them so I propose we use them as you are now, or perhaps, just a little more seriously, in a theatrical evening to cheer the boys. We, all the staff, may act out scenes from Shakespeare and I do have some Dryden as well or even just poetic recitations in fancy dress. What a novelty! Don’t you think they would enjoy it, such a change from the tedium of their illnesses, the constant talk of the War?”

Mary knew she must present her proposition to Captain McBurney and Jed at an administrative meeting and expected some gentle questions from the former and something altogether more humorously inflected from the latter, but she wanted most for Emma to join her in this enthusiasm. It would be a return to days before the War, when a family party might arrange such an event, or even just children in grandmother’s attic, rummaging in dusty chests and parading through the house, makers of their own entertainment, their own brave new world. 

“I think it is the best idea, Nurse Mary, though perhaps we should make sure that Chaplain Hopkins also adds his voice to yours when you tell Captain McBurney—for then he will be certain to listen and approve it,” Emma said. She sounded young and excited, as Mary imagined she had for her first ball.

Mary felt the brief, acid flare of offense taken at Emma’s suggestion that she could not put the project forward successfully alone, but she knew that Emma’s advice was doubly practical, for Captain McBurney did listen quite carefully to Mr. Hopkins in a way Dr. Summers never had, and also since it would be an appropriate way for the two to spend hours in conversation without any suggestion of impropriety.

“I should love to see Nurse Hastings in this,” Emma said, having placed another of wigs atop her head; it was more elaborately curled and the queue was still tied with an indigo ribbon, which dangled over Emma’s shoulder like a peacock’s folded fan. She then screwed up her face in an startlingly accurate impression of Anne at her most acerbic and declared, “You Colonial peasants! I can’t think what Miss Nightingale would say about this most shocking, most egregious waste of time! Haven’t you bandages to roll?”

Mary laughed aloud. Emma had often given her consoling looks when Anne was on a tirade, especially during the weekly meeting of the nursing staff, when the nuns’ faces were blankly pious and Matron only sucked on her teeth but Mary hadn’t expected Emma to be such a fine mimic, her wit and observation so well-married.

“Well, if you want her to wear it, you must never offer to her directly, but only express a most sincere interest in keeping it for yourself. Or even better, you must insist I wear it in the starring role of some great soliloquy, Lear perhaps or a speech of Prospero’s—then she will tear if from my hands in the blink of an eye!”

Now Emma laughed merrily and the wig toppled from her head but landed safely in a pile of forgotten cravats, all colors mixed together, like a tailor’s rag-bag. 

“How well you have taken her measure, Nurse Mary! I can’t see what Dr. Hale finds so appealing,” Emma said and Mary was quick to interject.

“We should not pursue that line, their arrangement is so… unusual and I would not have you in a position of deceiving your parents if they ask whether you are exposed to anything improper.”

“It hardly seems being proper has anything to do with anything at Mansion House. War, this War, any war, cannot be proper, can it?” Emma remarked. 

She did this sometimes, Emma Green, went from moments of charm and whimsy to address something deeply significant, with the gravitas assumed to belong only to a well-educated man. Henry Hopkins had occasionally mentioned how challenging he found her “not because she seeks to belittle or demean, but because she is fiercely passionate and so well-reasoned, I am out of my depth, Nurse Mary.” Would she always have become this woman, Mary wondered, or was the War responsible? It was unanswerable but it absorbed her to consider it, a respite from the questions that beset her about her own choices, the difficulties that attended any serious deliberation about Jedediah and what was between them.

“For myself, I would agree, Emma, that War itself means we have utterly abandoned propriety, the complete destruction of all the pillars of civilization and our Christian faith, but I would not like you to have to leave the post you have taken up because your parents are concerned that you will be compromised by any exposure to a foreign-born nurse who is socially rather… eccentric. And I would not have you lie.”

“It is fortunate, then, that my parents seem to take barely any interest in what goes on here and thus ask me little. If it were Belinda whose judgment we both feared… there is nothing she misses and she can tell when I am even thinking about something I oughtn’t,” Emma replied. She colored a little at the end and Mary wondered what she thought of then or who.

“Well, Matron serves much the same purpose here and I did promise I would return her key with a report of our discoveries. You may come with me if you like but you needn’t if you are wanted at home now. It’s grown late,” Mary said, beckoning Emma to step out of the closet, her hand glancing one last time on the brim of a grey silk bonnet Emma thought a bit dull until she glimpsed the lining, a pale violet taffeta with little velvet pansies clustered at the right. It would suit Mary but she’d never take it, never wear it. A pity, Emma thought, and decided to mention pansies to Dr. Foster until he took her meaning.

“Oh, I should like to. Do you think she’ll want the boots for herself?” Emma asked.

“Which ones?” 

“Why, the cavalry boots. Can’t you see her striding the halls in them? We should always know when she is coming, even if she hasn’t brought her pipe,” Emma replied blithely. 

Mary smiled at the image she had evoked and the overlay with Emma’s own happy face. She knew Henry Hopkins would nod smartly at her when he saw them on their way and she had a double pleasure considering how she would tell Caroline about the day’s events in her letter and what she would leave out-- the conversation she anticipated with Jedediah, how loudly he would laugh before he began musing about all that people left behind, how and why, how much or how little they would have given to be reunited.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Emily Dickinson and this was a little prompt to myself. I thought the "antiquated Grace" could be the powdered wigs and it was a humorous image I decided to play with. This is also a little homage to all the Turn fans out there who may be missing the Marquis. "Mon cher Coeur" was taken from Lafayette's letters to his wife, Adrienne (Emma is well read!)


End file.
